i am glad you said that syria did you give me these great segues into a conversation i wrote this down. i love this line in terms of how you open the text about your childhood. you say, "i was born into poverty and for a long time poverty was all i thought i would know. it defined me in the depths of my soul. " speaking of never giving up, particularly given where you started, how does poverty still define you? >> first of all, poverty continues to exist. it appearance seems to be relentless not only all of the things in america but also globally. we are over 7 billion people on earth. i do not see any philosophical analysis that suggests we know how to get out of this. what we need to do, people are not prepared to commit themselves even those who want to be outside of this oppression everyone is experiencing. nobody wants to step in and stopped the machine that perpetuates this relationship to poverty. many who have nothing as opposed to the few who have everything. as long as these disparities remain between people and forces, i think we will be in a perpetual state of a people. i w